South Florida's Sun Sentinel, sister publication of the Orlando Sentinel, both usually right leaning rags, has a monster expose today highlighting the fraud and waste that will forever be associated with FEMA. Katrina not only parted the curtains on the would be wizards and fools running the show in Washington, now the sunshine is starting to show the inner workings of this criminal enterprise.
Did Mr. Bush just say this week that he is accountable? It's time to collect.
Here's a taste of the Sentinel's findings:
[editor's note, by route66] CNN.com has a story on a veteran FEMA honcho and now whistleblower confirming he alerted Chertoff and Brown three days before the storm
hit
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/17/katrina.response/index.html
[update] Newsweek's Fineman has a must read story on the money that FEMA now necessarily will control, see link below
The federal government's mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe is only the latest bungling in a national disaster response system that for years has been fraught with waste and fraud.
A South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation has found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency in five years poured at least $330 million into communities that were spared the devastating effects of fires, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.
In the country's poorest, inner city neighborhoods, disaster assistance is considered an entitlement. Taxpayer money meant to help victims recover from catastrophes instead has gone to thousands of people who suffered little or no damage, including:
$5.2 million to Los Angeles area residents for the 2003 wildfires that burned more than 25 miles away.
$168.5 million to Detroit residents for a 2000 rainstorm that the then-mayor doesn't even remember.
$21.6 million in clothing losses alone to Cleveland-area residents for a 2003 storm that brought less than an inch and a half of rain.
The Sun-Sentinel first exposed fraud and waste in federal disaster aid in Florida last year, when FEMA distributed $31 million in Hurricane Frances relief to Miami-Dade County residents who experienced no hurricane conditions. U.S. senators and federal auditors, reacting to those reports, feared similar problems had occurred in disasters throughout the country.
The newspaper examined 20 of the 313 disasters declared by FEMA from 1999 through 2004, selecting cities where the agency's inspectors said they had encountered large-scale fraud. Of the $1.2 billion FEMA paid in those disasters, 27 percent went to areas where official reports showed only minor damage or none at all, the Sun-Sentinel found.
"It's so disturbing because we have urgent needs to help individuals who truly are the victims of disasters," said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I think it erodes public support for disaster assistance when there is a pattern of wasteful and abusive spending."
As chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Collins investigated FEMA's Miami-Dade payments and is now leading a congressional inquiry into the federal response to Katrina.
FEMA declined to answer questions about the newspaper's findings.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-femareport,0,7651043.storygallery?coll=sfla-
home-headlines
from Newsweek:
However much money is spent, who is going to spend it—and monitor whether it is spent legally, let alone properly? And who's in charge? "I don't really know, and the fact that I don't know concerns me," said John Kennedy, the Louisiana state treasurer. It's hardly reassuring that the two agencies funneling money into Louisiana are the most heavily criticized government entities on the face of the planet: FEMA and the state's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Local officials send their requests to the OHSEP, which forwards them to FEMA, which signs off on them and sends them back down the chain. "It looks like, right now, FEMA is playing the primary role," said Pres Kabacoff, a local developer. "But we're still trying to figure out who is FEMA, who is in charge." Local rivalries confuse things further: New Orleans officials, for example, would prefer to deal directly with the Feds, and to bypass Baton Rouge.
The ground-level confusion is fueling a debate within the White House about naming a "czar" to oversee the entire Gulf Coast effort—arguably the biggest reconstruction project since, well, Reconstruction. As the leading Republican in an otherwise mostly Democratic state, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana wants a czar, and has been lobbying Bush directly for the appointment of one. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions introduced a bill calling for establishment of a post-Katrina "manager"; Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, chairman of the Budget Committee, wants a White House office to perform the same function. But in Mississippi, they don't want a czar because they figure they already have one: Gov. Haley Barbour. A former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a close personal friend of the president's, Barbour has deep ties in Washington and to his state's GOP senators. He and the Mississippi delegation want him to run the show—a message Barbour personally "relayed" to the president, according to Barbour's press secretary. Still, the administration hasn't entirely ruled out the czar idea, and the names of potential candidates continue to swirl through the capital, from Colin Powell to Rudy Giuliani to Jack Welch.
The president is dispatching "inspectors general" to audit the books, but they had better be a cross between George Patton and Eliot Ness if they are going to master the folkways of Louisiana. Concerns have already been raised about the cronies who surround Governor Blanco. Jim Bernhard, a major financial supporter, last week quit the chairmanship of the state Democratic Party so he could devote himself full time to his company, the Shaw Group, which had just won a $100 million contract from the Feds for reconstruction work. The word around Baton Rouge: friends of state officials are likely to be first in line for subcontracts. The entire spectacle brings gales of bitter laughter from the denizens of the state capital. An alderman once famously said, "Chicago ain't ready for reform." It's not clear whether Baton Rouge is ready, either.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9379817/